What is special about the Hebrew language? Should it, by its very essence, be considered a holy tongue or a language of holiness that enhances the demands of ethics? The philosopher, Benjamin Gross, reveals how the adventure of language in Jewish thought leads us to the heart of those tensions that animate Jewish history: it expresses its innermost matters. This magnificently structured and carefully annotated study of the Holy Tongue and the Covenant of Speech is both a revelation of the march of Jewish history and a history of the language of Revelation. It explores the initial experience of the use of speech in the biblical world and the philosophic effort made by Jewish thought across the centuries to elucidate the themes involved in this specific experience. The Hebrew language takes us back to the dramas of Jewish existence as well as evoking the hope for the future of human destiny.